On Monday, Tucker Carlson interviewed Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos, a Christian Orthodox nun, under the libelous headline, “Christian Zionism Is Killing Christians in the Holy Land”. A closer look reveals that Mother Agapia has a long history of lying about Israel and siding with actual terrorists who are actively engaged in brutalizing Christians in Israel.
Born Anastasia and formerly known as Sister Maria Stephanopoulos, Mother Agapia is a US-born Russian Orthodox nun. She has lived in Jerusalem for decades, overseeing a convent school for Palestinian girls.
It is alarming that Carlson chose to feature Mother Agapia, presenting her to his listeners as a credible source. In a 2005 Jewish Press article titled Novak’s Nun, Jason Maoz revealed a dark history of Mother Agapia spreading false claims, demonizing Israel, and the IDF. In 2002, as part of Operation Defensive Shield, the IDF occupied Bethlehem and attempted to capture suspected Palestinian terrorists. A group of Palestinian gunmen seized the Church of the Nativity, taking monks and others as hostages. After 39 days, an agreement was reached, according to which the terrorists were exiled to Europe and the Gaza Strip.
During the siege and in its aftermath, several e-mails from the area, accusing Israeli soldiers of all manner of barbaric conduct, began to circulate widely on the Internet. The emails accused the IDF of looting. One of the e-mails claimed Israeli troops had “defecated” on the floors of a Bethlehem medical clinic they’d reduced to “shambles,” leaving “bullet holes all over the walls…and most of the equipment…damaged.”
Mother Agapia also made an appeal to US Christians in which she claimed that IDF troops had destroyed a clinic in Bethlehem, leading to the deaths of several infants.
The emails claimed the terrorists were “policemen and parishioners of these churches, husbands and brothers trying to defend their homes.”
An earlier e-mail from the same party had accused Israeli soldiers of raping Palestinian girls, but that account, wrote WorldNetDaily’s Paul Sperry at the time, was quickly discredited.
It was later revealed that the author of the emails was Mother Agapia. Agapia urged all recipients to “Get on the phone and ask your congressmen and senators why the United States government is backing this invasion of Israeli forces into sovereign areas, why so many innocent civilians are being terrorized in their homes, their towns and livelihoods being destroyed by the Israeli government, all in the name of stopping terror…”
None of these accusations against the IDF were ever substantiated, and Mother Agapia was forced to admit that she had not witnessed any of the events she claimed had happened.
Three weeks into the siege, three Armenian monks escaped from the church through a side entrance and told a very different story. Friar Narkiss Koraskian told reporters: “They stole everything. They stole our prayer books and four crosses. They didn’t leave anything.” When the siege ended, the released hostages told of frequent beatings of clergymen. The terrorists, they told The Washington Times, “ate like greedy monsters,” gorging themselves on food and slurping down beer, wine, and Johnny Walker scotch they stole from the rectory as their hostages went hungry. CATHOLIC priests said that the terrorists used their Bibles as toilet paper. Franciscan priest Nicholas Marques from Mexico reported: “Palestinians took candelabra, icons, and anything that looked like gold.”
Bethlehem’s Christians spoke of a “reign of terror” at the hands of the Palestinian terrorists. They told of rape, murder, and extortion that the men had waged against them over the previous two years.
In April of last year, Tucker Carlson interviewed Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem and notorious propagandist for the Palestinian anti-Israel narrative. Isaac is the director of Christ at the Checkpoint conferences, the infamous venue where anti-Israel libels are proclaimed in the name of Christian love, justice, and peace. Isaac has been exposed numerous times spreading falsehoods about Israel and Jews, many of which were repeated in his interview with Mother Agapia..
Mother Agapia is the daughter of Greek Orthodox priest Rev. Robert G. Stephanopoulos. In 1999, Rev. Stephanopoulos was relieved of his administrative and liturgical responsibilities at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York.
While accusing the “Zionist AIPAC” of influencing US policy, Mother Agapia is not without her own influence. She has admitted that her brother, George Stephanopoulos, a political commentator and former Democratic advisor, has interceded on her behalf with the White House and its National Security Council.
